Emily Kenyon 01 - A Cold Dark Place

coming. The color of Shelly’s skin looked so gray for human flesh it almost seemed as if it had been taken with black-and-white film, yet there was a hint of color in the form of thin bands that marked her wrist. He peered closer and felt the macaroni rise slightly in his stomach.
    He tapped the photo. “What are those?”
    “Ligature marks. Look closely. Do you have anything for sale that might leave that kind of indentation?”
    Davis pulled reading glasses from his breast pocket. “It looks like a double line, each mark”
    “That’s correct. The wire or tubing used to bind the girls’ wrists and feet, we think, though I admit it has been difficult determining just where they were bound because of the decomposition of the bodies.”
    “It could be 45V9, electrical,” he said. “It’s dual wire and is about that thick.” He tapped the photo once more. “Pretty flexible, too.”
    Olga wrote down the stock number. “You sell it here?”
    Davis looked up, queasy, but emotionless. “Yes. Not often, but we keep it on spools.”
    Spools, good. The killer needed lengths of it to tie them up.
    “All right,” she continued. “Before you take me to it, look at the other photo. I’m concerned with the plastic tarp”
    “Is that a leg?” he asked, looking closer at the larger of the two images on his desk.
    Olga didn’t answer him directly. “Focus on the plastic,” she said. “Anything like that around here?”
    Davis shook his head and rapped his hairy knuckles on his desk. Nerves were kicking in and beads of sweat had collected and started to roll from his temples. “No, I mean … I mean it is just clear plastic. That can come from anywhere. It could be Saran wrap for God’s sake. Maybe the Safeway people next door can help you”
    Olga stood, picked up a Builders’ Center pen and directed him back to the photo.
    “I realize that,” she said. “But look here. Look at the edge of the material. It is as plain as day and I don’t need to blow it up to prove to you that there’s something distinguishing about this tarp”
    Davis narrowed his gaze back to the unpleasant business at hand. Just past where the form of the human leg ended, he could make out some whitish cross-hatching. The tarp was at least three millimeters thick, and the edge of it had been embossed with three rows of Ys. They ran the full length of the seam, and then disappeared under, what Davis, now apparently allowed himself to accept, was one of his part-time cashiers’ dead bodies.
    “I think I know what that is,” he said. He lifted the photo and brought his gooseneck desk lamp closer. He turned the fixture to better illuminate the image. “Looks like Cross beam’s Triple D painter’s tarp. The edge is embossed to stop tears”
    Olga wrote that down, too. “DDD?”
    “Dense, durable, and defect-free. And yes, we sell it here. Not much. It’s expensive. Top of the line, but we do sell it. Oh God, no. . ” His voice trailed to a soft whimper as the realization of what it meant set in. “You don’t think the killer got his supplies here?”
    Olga gathered up the photos and tucked them back inside her oversized purse. “As I said, I don’t think he shopped here. But I’d bet my life he works here” She reached for her coat and started for the door. “I want to see Dylan Walker. Is he working today?”
    If there was a more handsome man working at the Builders’ Center-in all of Meridian, for that matter-Olga Morris would have been hard pressed to give up a name. Everything about Dylan Walker was perfect. His teeth were whiter than plaster of paris. His eyes were dark and sparkly. At thirtythree, he had a thick mane of dark brown hair that any woman would have killed for. His body was that perfect V: broad shoulders that were square without being too angular and honest-to-goodness six-pack abdominal muscles that revealed themselves whenever he reached for a can of paint on a higher shelf. More than one Meridian woman asked for the eggshell tint base, when she really wanted a flat paint because, well, Dylan Walker had to move that body to reach it.
    Olga moved past the plumbing supply section, sinks and toilets displayed with pencil-point lighting that made them look like objets d’art. The smell of gardenias from a shipment of plants in the nursery hung in the soggy air of the rainy day. As she rounded the corner at the end of the aisle, she could hear a woman twittering about something.
    “… Oh really? I